LIVE BLOG: France v Switzerland

Good evening all, and welcome to the continuing Live Blog coverage of United players at the World Cup on RoM. Patrice Evra and his French cohorts take on perhaps the strongest Swiss team ever to represent at the World Cup Finals. Should be an intriguing game, the winner is almost gaurenteed to qualify for the next stage, and as group winners to boot

I think it was because he was that great of a man manager he didn’t really need star players to succeed…Fergie was the master of harnessing the maximum contribution from fairly average players. He go the wins, the trophy haul, and was able to keep wages on net spend on players down in relation to other european heavy weights. I don’t know but that has to be it surely..

How the fuck else do you explain

flogging off Pogba for Cleverly or Anderson
Letting Pique go for an emerging Evans

Trafford_lord, Pique was 22 and not getting nearly enough game time with Rio and Vidic being around. I don’t think Fergie had much choice, he wanted first team football and we couldn’t offer him it, Fergie didn’t stand in his way of a return to Barca.

Letting Pogba go though was a big mistake obviously. Losing a player for nothing who’s one of the most valued young players in the world has made us look rather foolish.

Gary I understand the elements surrounding Pique’s return to Catalonia…what I am pointing at is the curious valuations of these players. What value was placed on Pique? How much did we sell him back to Barcelona? What value did we place on Pogba? How much did we let him go for? It’s probably the greatest puzzle latter years of the Fergie era, the mishandling of players in conjunction with an inability to get the maximum value for their departure from the club.

If you listen some posters here who will not be named, Pogba was a brat that had the audacity to challenge the coaching staff on why he was being led to rot in the reserve/youth squad while starting berths were being handed out to Cleverly, Anderson etc. He had a point, he is currently one of the stars of the midfield of the Italian champions and at the World Cup the highest stage (yes higher than champs league) he feeds a killer pass forward (yes forward) as an assist to Benzema.

On the handling of player acquisitions, wages, and departures we as a club have been failing in some instances. Ashley Young is on multiple thousand of pounds wages but we couldn’t spot that Pogba was ready to play in our non existent pedestrian and utterly unimaginative midfield.

Because there has always been a curious addiction to the mediocre in England. Small wonder why some of our brethren here were convinced Moyes was the best managerial option for us after Fergie.

Think of some of the biggest performers in this World Cup Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany etc

See how good their players are, very very technically good. Do you think United would ever offer the same amount of money in transfer and wages as we are currently doing in the pursuit of the English teenager Shaw. Shaw, Young, Downing, Carroll, Lallana etc good players, grossly overpriced, and relative to the world stage and the very highest level competitions – ultimately quite mediocre in comparison. Hodgson is a mediocre manager, not bad or awful but average.

Pogba was looking to leave a good 18 months before the end of his contract, SAF did the right thing, why would he offer game time to someone likely to leave on a free? Its rediculous to keep on mentioning him and Pique was homesick, so went nack to Barca, end of story stop harping onto the past. France were good organsed a usually well organised Swiss defence, theyve got a good chance to go far this year.

1. My Pique comment is based on valuation…thats all i am saying. You cant give time to all promising players in a big club with big squads. You can’t control players pining for home or a move elsewhere but you can control the compensation for losing said player. Arsenal let Fabregas go, Barca let young promising Thiago go….they got the best deal they could for them. Just like we got for Ronnie.

2. A Euro-centric observer will most likely see the champ league as the pinnacle…however the world is bigger than Europe, the glorious Brazilians of the 70′s et al did their stuff at the World Cup, so did the Germans, italians and dutch…every football fan worldwide knows this history. Moreover all we heard was how Spanish FA were dominant because spanish teams won in Europe…but at the world cup the level is so high that it makes highly reputable teams look ridiculous if they are not firing on all cylinders. Pele,Maradona, Zidane, Van Basten, Baggio, Ronaldo etc ….fpr me its the World Cup….way better than watching Athletico vs Real.

The champions league has definatly overtook the wotld cup, its where the best players usaully play, you cant garentee the best players will pl,ay in a world cup, its unuausl for big clubs to have a bad season and miss champions league like in our case but countries with big players usually miss out, theirs always some of the best players in the world who miss out on a world cup, like ibra this year, the players you mentioned only pele never played in europe